Posts By: Dana Cree

March 28th, my first book was published, a cook book about ice cream, called Hello My Name Is Ice Cream; the Art and Science of the Scoop. You can find more information about it here! hellomynameisicecream.com I am so honored this opportunity came my way, to be the proud author of a book of my… Read more »

The term “annual review” doesn’t garner the same excitement as “staff party.” While I had attended staff parties with regularity throughout my career, I had honestly never had a real review until I came on board with One Off Hospitality in 2012 at Blackbird. I find the these reviews mildly exhausting to perform for my own… Read more »

Admittedly, it’s been a little quiet over here at The Pastry Department. A fact that can only mean one thing, we have been anything but quiet in our kitchens! I’ll give you a little update on the team here, as we have all been doing pretty wonderful things in our absence from this blog. Which… Read more »

In the family of meringues, French meringue would be considered the most basic. Compared to its Swiss and Italian cousins that require you to apply heat before you make your meringue, French meringue is made with a simple addition of granulated sugar. The post here on Meringue describes the science behind French meringue in detail,… Read more »

Italian Meringue made by cooking the sugar included in the recipe with water until it reaches 240 degrees, before you add it to the whipping egg whites. Because the individual sugar crystals are dissolved in water, all the sugar crystals are broken down into individual sucrose molecules before being added to the whipped egg whites…. Read more »

Swiss meringue is made by combining sugar and egg whites in a bowl and stirring them over a water bath until the temperature reaches 145 degrees F. Once the egg whites are warmed and the sugar dissolves, the mixture is whipped to stiff peaks. The resulting meringue is dense like marshmallow fluff, as the early… Read more »

Recently I had the professional privilege of cooking with group of nationally celebrated chefs at a Friends of The James Beard Foundation dinner at The American Restaurant in Kansas City. The restaurant, the crown jewel in the Hallmark empire, was opulently designed by Warren Platner 40 years ago, borrowing stylistically from another of his restaurants, Windows… Read more »

As a pastry chef, I tend to chase textures. Unlike a savory chef, who has a wide array of nature-made textures at their disposal, for example, the range of textures in fish and meat, or raw vegetables, pastry chefs have to create the textures they work with. Where as a savory chef can use nuts, raw carrots,… Read more »

I visited my friend Amanda Rockman recently in Austin, Texas. She’s taken up residency at The South Congress Hotel, where she fills pastry cases, dessert menus, poolside bars, coffee shops, and an ice cream truck with her brilliant wares. While we were in the kitchen talking she told me a story about a shirt her… Read more »

I’ve recently taken a new pastry chef position at a collection of restaurants with the same name, The Publican. What was once just a beer hall dedicated to pork and oysters holding down a dark corner of Chicago’s Fulton Market meatpacking district, the Publican brand has since expanded to include Publican Quality Meats, a… Read more »